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Tuesday, 18 January 2011

On Martin Luther King, the message and heroes

The hate groups will take very little to set them off, and recently we’ve had another bigot rumble from a group f religious folks who would like to make it clear that Martin Luther King would not have supported gay rights.
And in general, this is something that just causes me to shrug, maybe roll my eyes. I don’t particularly care whether Martin Luther King was a homophobe or not (and if you’re anti-gay rights then, yes, you’re a homophobe)

So on the whole, I don’t care whether Martin Luther King supported gay rights or not. My rights don’t become more or less important on the basis of whether one man supported them or not. I think the whole idea of asking whether ANYONE would have supported gay rights is irrelevant and offensive – because it implies our rights need approval – and from a straight man no less.

More over, nor would I hail how pro-gay MLK would have been because, well, he didn’t seem to be. Whatever the personal opinions of this straight man were, they were not sufficient to warrant particular attention from him. I wouldn’t hold him up as a champion or supporter of gay rights not just because it’s appropriative, but because I don’t think he is due that accolade.

A lot of my opinion comes from my not having much truck with heroes of any stripe. I think it’s a bad habit of humanity to put people on pedestals. We raise someone up and suddenly we have to agree with everything they’ve ever said and done, we fight rabidly at any suggestion that they may have made mistakes, done some bad things, *gasp* been human. I’ve seen people defend things they find personally highly objectionable because Hero has said/done them. I think you can praise and honour and respect someone and their words and actions and message, but hero-worshipping someone often ends up in problematic areas.

I think sometimes we honour a person over the message they brought (how much of MLK’s message is even remembered? His words out outraged injustice His peace activism? How much of these messages are lost?) Hence why so many of the right wingers love top completely rip the famous “I have a dream” speech. They’re appealing to the authority of a hero and violating his message of anti-racism. And it’s certainly not in any way limited to one man – from Ghandi to Mothert Theresa to founding fathers to Churchill to Nelson Mandela to a squillion other people have been placed on pedestals and hailed.

That doesn’t mean his message wasn’t important. Ye gods it was. It doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be honoured for being the creator and speaker of that message, because there aren’t enough hails in the world. It also doesn’t mean that that message is not applicable to GBLT people, especially GBLT people of colour – but is the message dependent on the man’s personal approval for it to be applicable? Would the message not have as much power and meaning – including for GBLT people – if he was actually a homophobe or indifferent to gay rights or whatever?

I don’t think so – because his message was inspired and glorious and insightful and powerful and cannot be diminished by any number of people arguing “no, it totally doesn’t apply to the homos” You can’t kill inspiration and passion and rightness so easily